I believe this to be a major fault on this laptop and others exibiting the same problem. It is something that should be taken very seriously by Dell and remedied at no cost to the owners.
Dell claims that all batteries of this kind swell up when they are at end of life. So what are they saying? You can expect your premium laptop to be seriously damaged when the battery is at end of life?
How do we determine the end of life of battery? In most cases an end of life battery is over 2 year old and will exhibit poor performance.
In my case my swollen battery is less than 2 years old and is still providing a good 4 hours of solid power under serious work loads!
Perhaps we are to determine an impending end of life by the way the keyboard is arching and the touchpad popping out?
In reality this is nonsense, had I not done some research I wouldn't have suspected the bulging battery and would have just assumed the keyboard had warped from use.
Out of 20 or so laptops I have owned this is the first and only one that has exhibited this problem.
Unfortunately Dell here is guilty of providing a faulty product which has the potential to be harmful.
Waiting for a fire or an exploding laptop is not the way we should have to determine when to change the battery.
I have laptops with 6 year old batteries in them and they haven't swollen or blown up!
I have owned 3 Dells in my 30 years career as an IT professional (and many other laptops of other makes)
The 1st Dell Inspiron the screen hinge collapsed after 6 months the second XPS15 the hard drive failed after 3 month and now the XPS13 with a potentially explosive battery which may have damaged the laptop.
I do not think there will be a 4th Dell in my life.
If you're going to use the battery swelling as a future purchase criterion, you'll be buying only desktops in the future.
Anything powered by a pouch-cell lithium ion or lithium polymer battery can have the battery swell at end of life. It doesn't matter if it's a notebook, cell phone, TI calculator, or any other electronic device, and among notebooks, it doesn't matter if the name on the outside is Dell, Apple, HP, Lenovo, Acer or any other.
There are generally warning signs before the swelling becomes significant -- or, simply replace the battery on a 2-year cycle and you'll likely never experience it in the first place.
As with any device, batteries aren't lifetime components -- they are consumables, just like tires, brake pads, and wiper blades on an automobile.
I respectfully disagree. I have never had a laptop battery swell let alone one that damaged a laptop after less than 2 years.
I have a Asus Zenbook with a battery in it that is over 5 years old, it gets used daily, the battery doesn't do much except sit in there. I have an Acer with a battery in it that is 6 years old. It was used until last month. I have two old Sonys I used for many years with dead batteried in them.
Absolutelly none of these laptops showed any problems with swelling batteries. So given that xps13 is less than 2 years old I would say yes it is indeed fair to single Dell out!
A failing battery should never destroy the appliance it powers in such a short time let alone a top of the range laptop and if it were the case that a laptop needs a battery replacement every year then it should be clearly stated.
Exactly because batteries swell at end of life there should be sufficient space tolerance as there is in other laptops to ensure no critical components get damaged. As I said before this laptop is designed to fail.
Let's face it if the swelling of batteries compromises the integrity of the product because of its attempt to be the smallest, slimmest on the market at the very least there should be a clear warning on the laptop like a sticker or something or a large printed note in the manual. That is the honest thing to do.
ejn63
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Posted April 8th, 2022 08:00
If you're going to use the battery swelling as a future purchase criterion, you'll be buying only desktops in the future.
Anything powered by a pouch-cell lithium ion or lithium polymer battery can have the battery swell at end of life. It doesn't matter if it's a notebook, cell phone, TI calculator, or any other electronic device, and among notebooks, it doesn't matter if the name on the outside is Dell, Apple, HP, Lenovo, Acer or any other.
There are generally warning signs before the swelling becomes significant -- or, simply replace the battery on a 2-year cycle and you'll likely never experience it in the first place.
As with any device, batteries aren't lifetime components -- they are consumables, just like tires, brake pads, and wiper blades on an automobile.